Join the Club

In a way, I'm a bit sad.

I've been sticking with the Don't Break the Chain approach to revising one of my old drafts -- a book that optimistically combines love, sex, religion, drugs, death, magic, biodiesel and video games under the unlikely title of The Ballad of Congo Willy.[1] This was the product of NaNoWriMo for me in 2011, and I have attempted rewrites and restarts every few months since the keys cooled from the original draft, always fizzling out for one reason or another.[2] But I'm actually almost nearing the end of it now, three months into making myself spend some time with it every night. I can't say that it's actually good, but I know at least that it's improved from its previous form, shoved in a box on a shelf being ignored.

Inspiration was hard to come by for this one, and instead of getting itchy fingers at the approach of November this year -- time for a carnival o' writing! -- I'm feeling kind of... dry. Empty. Not used up, necessarily, but not as eager as in years past. A bit sad, even, because there's no way I'm not doing NaNo this November, and more than I'll allow myself a night away from C.W.. Writing even terrible fiction is such a sea change from my day job mucking around with databases and code,[3] and I enjoy the oddball camaraderie of the Typewriter Brigade and the general festival nature of NaNo. For someone who slips into his habits easily and stubbornly refuses to get out, a month of creative chaos is a welcome and necessary part of my life now.

But what to write about?

I know that I'm not a (seat of the) Pantser come November. I don't just sit down at the typewriter and bleed. I need at least a sketch of a character or two, and a situation to toss them into: the basics of an outline, which I adhere to or drift from over the course of the thirty days. This flawed exercise is my capital-p Process, such as it is. And usually I am coming into October with just exactly these basics, having scrawled them down in notebooks and index cards during the summer. But I've spent all that time this year rewriting and revising, not sowing. So just as I'm forcing myself to Get Creative Daily, Dammit, I'm going to cutover into Full Bore Planning Mode in October.

The Internet[4] attributes this quote to Jack London:

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

After three months of enforced hill-climbing, I completely agree. There are days when rewriting C.W. was mental agony, and days when I couldn't get out of the way of my fingers fast enough. And I know that book is far better[5] overall for the attention it's been paid this summer, especially when the going got tough. And now I'm looking at the hill that is November, and realizing that I need to climb this thing yet again, and the only way to do this is to grab hold of both sets of bootstraps[6] and go.

But it's friendlier with more.

So here's a challenge to you, dear reader. Who's with me? Who's willing to head out and club up some inspiration? Who needs to break out of their daily rut a bit and write four weeks of bad prose? "I have nothing to write about" isn't an excuse.

Who's going to join the club?

---

[1] I did say I was being optimistic.

[2] Just one reason: pure unadulterated slacking off. I've tapped a vein of the stuff and mine it all day long.

[3] All of which is flawless, of course.

[4] "The Internet is always right." -- Abraham Lincoln

[5] And much, much weirder. I'm happy with that, too.

[6] Not sure this is physically possible. Not worrying about that, either.

Illustrator Wanted

Just popping in for a moment here, before the family treks off on some mandated Togetherness Time. (Actual quote from my wife and I to kids: "We will have fun, it won't be boring, so put down the video games and get your shoes on!")

Rob Bowker correctly and kindly suggested that I need an illustrator for the vision I'm carrying around in my head for the cover of my honest-I'll-self-publish-any-day-now novel One Last Quest. Of course, I have no experience finding the same. How exactly does one find such talent these days? Craigslist posting? Comb through deviantArt? Hang out in Starbucks and Peet's and look for someone sketching? Does one even sketch any more, or is it all done with iPads these days?

If things get desperate, I can always hand the digitizing pen over to my nine-year-old daughter. At least she won't be riddled with self-doubt, and I can reimburse her in leftover Christmas cookies.

For Those About to Read...

All right, all right. Deek of Type Clack has been shamelessly flogging my 2009 NaNo draft, without any sort of encouragement from me (private to Deek: your check is in the mail.) I did finally -- finally! -- finish reading through and cleaning up my initial transcription, and posted it online as a Google doc. It's tucked away here, on a page that might become home to similar such things, if I'm so inclined. Deek has been generous with the praise, as has Duffy, who saw an earlier, less cleaned-up draft. I'm still waiting on that other shoe.

There are still a number of problems, mostly of the odd or duplicate word: most of this work was undoing the erratic "fixes" imposed by the automatic spell checker. I have not re-read it all the way through again, but I'll update it in place when I get a chance.

I'm happily accepting any and all comments, suggestions, improvements, and (of course) faint praise. If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, curled up all fetal and humming to myself.

EDIT: I'm also learning how to use Google documents, so if I suddenly break the link, be patient. I may be putting an update in place. Or erasing all my hard work. You know, either way.

Listening to the Zone

Typed on a 1943 Hermes Baby

A Word From Muses Local #128

Typed on a Lettera 32

That's What She Said (Wrote)

I don't know whether this is one of those freaky typosphere convergences, or another tribute to the utility of paper and pens, but today's post on Little Flower Petals was spookily similar to what's become my own standard practice: namely, using a composition book to jot down all manner of ideas. I've talked about this before, in using a small Rhodia pad for on-the-go capture, and I still tote that little guy around with me on walks and to the kids' sporting events, as it's the ideal form of pocketable pen-friendly paper. But lately, I've been using a composition book by the bed, and trying to make myself write at least one thing in it every night.

Composition books are great: they're cheap and spacious and a comfortable lap size, and the stiff covers are suitable for holding a reading light: good for those of us jotting late at night. I'm using Staples "eco easy" line of books, which are made from bagasse paper (remnants from sugarcane production.) It's a light, slightly crispy paper that also takes fountain pen ink exceptionally well, especially for the price. My barely-awake ramblings in the notebook get transferred to index cards on one of the typewriters: usually Norma Jean as she's an elite machine, so I can pack more words per card as needed.

I have a number of works-in-progress in mind when I make notes, and put an abbreviated working title next to the notes which gets transcribed onto the cards (makes it easier to sort out later.) Currently, I've got nine works in various states of woolgathering, including my 2009 entry, and a first draft that I started writing just to test out a restored typewriter (and which will need a do-over, since I got stuck and abandoned it.)

With all the hype about the latest greatest iThing and how it will revolutionize media consumption, it's very satisfying to find rewards in low-tech acts of media production.

• Glimpse Insight @ LFP
• Eco Easy books at Staples and another blogger's review
  

Oh Brother, I'm Gonna Dye

I passed on this one at first, but after very little convincing, it came home in the end, as I'm sure you knew it would. But now, there's a twist.

Inspired by Alpha-Smartie Vance Fry, I'm going to try my hand at giving this old Brother a makeover. You can sort of tell from my photo: some of that yellow is the color scheme and some... well, some is not. It could be tobacco, or age, or a combination of both.

I considered trying my hand at mixing up a batch of Retr0Bright to bleach the colors back into newness, but honestly, I have no desire to do this. That yellow... that brown... it's time for it to go.

There's not a lot of color choices available in off-the-shelf vinyl dyes -- I could also choose black, beige, or a buffed silver -- but looking at those red keys got me thinking that this little machine wants more than a life of blah. So, red it shall be. Take a good long look, because that color scheme is going to dye.

• My discussion topic on flickr's AlphaSmart group
  

Five by Five

Dear Everyone

Wow.

That's pretty much all I can say. Wow.

My courtesy copy of Silent Type just arrived today, smothered under the monthly swarm of bills and pre-pre-pre-season Christmas catalogs. Recycle the catalogs and hang the bills, this thing is gorgeous and can't wait. Miles beyond the splotchy purple-mimeo'd 'zines of our youth*. I'm knocked out.

* Those of you who were hip enough to make such things, anyway. I was still snickering at

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

Punching on the Edge

The punch I talked about earlier just came in, and I'm thrilled. It's exactly what I was hoping for: something to make a neat, V-shaped notch in the edge of my homemade edge-punched cards:

The red overlay shows the sizes of the punches I've tried and how much paper they remove. The first one was too big. The second one was too small. But the third one? Just right. Zsa Zsa, my Studio 44 is home this weekend for a touch of case repair, so she helped me type up cards for the remaining ideas that I'd jotted down over vacation. I was concerned about running the perforated edge down into the works of a typewriter -- visions of the line of holes being chewed up -- but I needn't have worried: Zsa Zsa offered a gentle touch and was most well-mannered.



The saga:

• The original post about index-card plotting
• And then, "Hey, it works"
• Followed by trying to improve it by using edge-punched cards
  

On Noodling

Production note: I was trying to emulate Joe Van Cleve's color-wash technique, but had little luck getting the wax to transfer to the page. My color wash of diluted fountain pen ink made the page a lovely mushy blue, but no letters. So, I fell back on the method demonstrated by his grandson and just scanned the wax paper outright, boosting the contrast in Gimp.

Colorcasting Redux

I experimented some more over the weekend with ersatz color carbon paper
made from crayons, trying to take a slightly scientific approach to what worked and what did not. Your own experiences may vary (and I'd like to hear them.)

• Using thin paper as the backing for the crayon was essential. I tried some 24# all-cotton stationery and some very heavy cardstock, and neither worked as well as the plain old 20# office white. Newsprint or vellum might work even better.
• Related to that, coloring on smooth paper on a hard surface was better than textured paper or an irregular surface. When I'm done coloring, there's no plain paper peeping through the wax.
  
• Baking the paper still seems to be the best way to truly get the wax smoothed out. I tried ironing a sheet between aluminum foil, but the impressions were faint and irregular. I'm still doing small pieces that fit in the toaster over (much faster than the main oven) and am baking at about 300° F for several minutes. This is a low enough temperature that the paper isn't burning, but I still didn't leave it alone. Solar-heating didn't work at all (hung paper from the clothesline on a 100+° day.) Crayon shavings pretty much require heating unless you want to pick them out of your typewriter later. (Not recommended.)
  
• Dark colors work best on white paper, duh. I did a sample with yellow, and it barely showed up. I don't have any good, dark paper around to test lighter colored crayons. (I did use yellow to blend in with other colors, though.)
• Crayon brand doesn't seem to make any difference. Washable crayons performed about the same as regular ones, though my own experience making recycled crayons has taught me that the originals melt the best.
  
• Stencil mode worked better than having the ribbon getting in the way. Of course, this means you're also "blind typing" (though see the note below.) This would be an interesting experiment to try on a standard machine designed to hammer through multiple pages. Anyone want to try this with a Selectric?
• Touch control may make a difference, but it's hard for me to tell when the T.C. affects my regular typing. A machine with very fast/hard action is bound to work better than a soft-touch machine, and better than a noiseless-style machine.

I noticed that the best samples were evident because the letters I had just typed on the back of the colored pages were very clearly visible in white, as if the wax had broken away on the other side. Samples that I typed using other prep techniques (ironing the colored sheet, for example) did not show this effect -- I was truly blind-typing then.

Time to pick up

It's Tuesday, and my octopus only has seven legs.

This non-sequitur is brought to you by my latest knitting project. In knitting, the first row of stitches made is called the "cast on" row. That language puts me in the mind of fishing, and it's not a bad comparison, hopefully throwing your line into the water to see what you catch. I've only really managed one of the many methods of casting on, but it serves me well. My problem now with the octopus is that I need to go back and revisit that first row to attach legs, so the end product will look like a something, and not like a blob.

My knitting -- like my writing -- tends to shape up after a few rows (lines), so my cast-on row is numerically correct with the proper number of stitches, but may have serious style problems. Typically the tension in the yarn is wrong, and picking over it uncovers all the weak spots and funny gaps that even out over the course of the project. Now with this pattern, I have to go back and "pick up" stitches, which means just what it sounds like. Stitches that are done and in the past, stuff I laid down at the start of the project now suddenly fund themselves back on the needle and under scrutiny, being asked to support something else. And somehow, despite my ability to count to numbers higher than ten, I seem to be running out of room to attach the legs on the octopus. I just started leg number six last night, and without some creative rejiggering, it looks like I might be making a septopus after all. I'll figure this out, though. Knitting can be surprisingly tolerant of failure, especially when you're just doing it for fun. I'll work around it and it'll come out OK.

Now, it's Tuesday night -- the night of my wife's knitting class, coincidentally -- which leaves me and the offspring alone tonight. Once they're abed this evening, I will have about ninety minutes of quiet-in-the-house time. Unlike last week when I squandered this by actively ignoring the NaNo draft sitting right there on the side table, I think I'll dig out the pen and the note cards and start dealing with all those early lines, those cast-on pages that laid the foundation for the final story. Lines and pages that need reworking and revisiting, to ease out the tension and straighten things up. (Or maybe just ripping them out altogether.)

It's time to pick up and get to work.

Camera-go-round

Oh, this is just too wonderful:

• Sending your video camera around the sushi conveyor (from Boing Boing, et. al.)

Be sure to watch it all the way through.

Crossing the Span

• Strikethru: Keitai shosetsu showdown: Quillpill vs. Textnovel

Sowing Ephemera

I've been thinking more about Typewriter Day 2009, and I think Olivander's inadvertently hit on a great theme for this year's type-0-bration. It removes the anxiety of typing drivel over someone else's work, but still gives your fingers and ribbons and keys a workout. I like it, and highly encourage you all to elect Olivander as your 2009 Typewriter Day Parade Marshal.

The only idea I've been able to come up wth somewhere is one that I stole from... someplace* on the Intertubes. One of the joys of coming into old typewriters or cameras or the like is the random bits of ephemera that sometimes are floating around in the case. My most recent acquisition of an old camera bag, for instance, included the lenses and such that I actually wanted, but also three cloth bags meant to hold a roll of exposed film and be mailed back for processing. Mailed where? Who knows... there's no address, but it's a neat thing nonetheless. Old film is even better, if you can find it. Whole flickr sets are devoted to this form of random treasure-finding.

Better still, though, is found writing. Marginalia in secondhand books, newspaper clippings pressed inside pages, the works. All fascinating stuff to the retro-minded. The only problem with it is that there's so little to go around. And so here I sit, with typewriters and paper and pens and pencils all around me, and nary a project in sight... hmmm. If only I could somehow share that joy of finding ephemera... double hmmm...

So I'm distilling the idea of a themed, typewritten letter with the joy of finding something personal in an unexpected place. Specificaly, I'm going to type up a bunch of stealth bookmarks and -- on the sly --"salt" books in the library and secondhand shops around me with these slips. Random phrases, lucky numbers, torn fragments from a Dear John letter. And it should keep this idle mind busy enough to stay out of serious trouble until June.

* One of the problems with subscribing/scanning/reading so many blogs is that I have a lousy memory for where I read a really neat thing, and rather than be able to link directly to it, I tend to natter on (like this) about this great idea I read... someplace... and can't give credit. So if you see this somewhere else, it's likely that's where I stole it.

And it's (almost) halftime...

Everybody kicking some wordcount butt? Yes? No? Well, even if you're not, just keep at it. Even with my highly-planned setup, I've suddenly been introduced to three brothers that seem to be serving as both comic relief and some word-building backstory. Writing their pathos makes me think that the rest of the book is over-serious, something I'll have to investigate when I go back to revise: seek opportunities for lightness. I'm concerned that I've got 100+ pages of drudge to muck through before there's any chuckles, and that may be too much for anyone to bear.

Maybe I need appropriate headgear? These three brothers were born of an early-morning writing session when I'm still in my pajamas, groggily blinking my way into the world of the living again. I can get maybe three pages done in the morning before the kids are up, but get another five or six at work on my lunch. I think the button-down shirt is making me too serious. Might need to look into wearing the kilt sometime. (Or you know, not and instead keeping my job.)

What moves you?

OK, now I'm just plain gloating. I owe it all to Duffy and the brilliance that is the Typewriter Brigade. I've hit a couple of rough patches here at the end of the first third of the story, but that's mostly due to under-planning on my part. As a whole, I'm excited about my NaNovel, and think it's coming together well for the hasty, poorly typed draft that it is. And I'm especially digging how the lack of a mass-select-and-delete feature has forced me to redo a page or two here and there when I just couldn't let it lie (and needed a hook for later.)

Using Rollabind to keep the manuscript together has been a good thing, too. I've filled the first set of discs, and need to move into a new notebook with today's writing. I like being able to go back and drop in pages that need to be inserted, like this morning's work of fleshing out past scenes or doing some rewrites of exceptionally strange pages. I'm looking forward to revising this around mid-December, and running it past "the critics" in our house, namely my wife, my English prof. mom, and my son, who this whole thing is really for.

Somewhere in the past year, we stopped the habit of the nightly bedtime story: he outgrew it, or his younger sister grew into it, or something, but pretty much gone are the days when he'd fall asleep listening to me read Dr. Seuss or Tolkien or fables or whatever. Now he skulks out of his room just before bedtime, his radio blaring the local all-rock-goofy-DJ station-with-the-awesome-name, gives us a good-night kiss, and that's it until he's hunched over cereal and comics at dawn. He's still reading on the sly, and we keep his room well-stocked with books, but I'm looking forward to sharing this one with him. And that's really the motivation for NaNo for me this year. He's the reason I'm busting out the word count this time around, the reason I'm not anguishing over the really awful clunky dialog I've laid down, and the reason why I'm going to go over every single page with a pen in hand and edit, edit, edit this bastard until I'm not ashamed to read it aloud.

Come December 1 I'll hang up my "novelist" hat for a year -- note to self: buy a noveling hat -- but this year, I'm doing it with a little more pride.

I'm not trying to brag...

...but I am completely thrilled with the boon that is the Typewriter Brigade. Good karma all around for the TypeMos. I've never written this much this quickly, and I'm actually falling behind in my story, despite being about three days ahead in terms of word count. There's literally not enough writing time in the day right now.

I know that this is the honeymoon period, the thrill of being able to finally -- finally -- work on the novel after all that time planning and sifting and jotting and sorting, but I'm completely convinced that there's something magical about typing it up by hand, no electronica and especially no distractions. And I'm really enjoying camping out the office lobby with the Skyriter. It's a sweet little machine, even with the sticky "5" and "e" typebars, and it's attracted its share of comments. I just love being able to go heads-down with it and bang out a page or five in an hour.

I've been watching your blogs and checking your word count, and I feel just a trifle guilty about crowing this loudly this soon, but I'm way too giddy not to say something.

Hiatus